The present invention relates to a medium feeding device to be incorporated in a recording apparatus or a liquid ejecting apparatus to feed a recording medium or a target medium. More particularly, the present invention relates to a medium feeding device enabled to manually feed a recording medium or a target medium to the recording medium or the liquid ejecting apparatus.
There is an ink jet printer available as one of large-sized recording apparatuses enabled to print sheets of paper, whose size is a relatively large size, for example, from JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) A4 size to JIS A2 size. Such a large-sized ink jet printer handles heavy paper. Thus, it is difficult for this ink jet printer to supply paper from the rear side thereof and eject paper at the front side thereof similarly to a small-sized ink jet printer. Consequently, this large-sized ink jet printer is adapted to supply and eject paper at the Font side thereof. That is, a sheet supply cassette, which is enabled to accommodate sheets of paper (one example of the recording medium or the target medium) to be automatically fed, and a sheet feeder/ejector including a cover portion of the sheet supply cassette which is enabled to stack thereon sheets of paper having been automatically ejected and is enabled to manually supply sheets of paper therefrom. The sheet feeder/ejector is disposed at the front of this ink jet printer.
When sheets of paper are automatically fed by this sheet feeder/ejector, plural sheets of paper are accommodated in a stacked state in the sheet supply cassette. Then, a leading edge of the accommodated sheet of paper is lifted by a hopper, and is caused to abut against a sheet feeding roller. Thus, the sheets of paper are sequentially friction-fed from the top sheet thereof while guided by a sheet edge guide. Meanwhile, when the sheets of paper are manually fed, for example, the trailing end portion of one sheet of paper is put on the cover portion. Then, the leading end portion of this sheet of paper is set to be superposed on the leading end portion of each of the sheets of paper accommodated in the sheet supply cassette. Subsequently, the leading edge of the manually-fed sheet of paper is lifted by the hopper together with the sheets of paper accommodated in the sheet supply cassette, and is caused to abut against the sheet feeding roller. Then, the sheets of paper are friction-fed while the leading end portions of the sheets of paper are guided by the sheet edge guide (see Japanese Patent Publication No. 2002-68535A).
In the aforementioned sheet feeder/ejector, in a case where the sheet of paper accommodated in the sheet supply cassette differs in kind of paper from that of paper put on the cover portion, adhesion sometimes occurs between these sheets of paper. In a case where such adhesion occurs, overlapped-sheet feeding easily occurs at the friction feed of a sheet of paper. This may preclude the subsequent conveyance and recording of a sheet of paper.
To solve this problem, it is advisable to form the cover portion of the sheet supply cassette in a size sufficient to put the whole of a sheet of paper, which is manually fed, on the cover portion. However, in the case of forming such a cover portion, there is the necessity for providing a space between the cover portion and the sheet edge guide to thereby prevent the cover portion from interfering with the sheet edge guide when the cover portion is lifted by the hopper. Thus, when the sheet of paper to be manually fed is set, an edge of the sheet of paper may enter the space and may be folded. This may preclude the manual feeding of the sheet of paper.